IKEA planning construction of another facility in Belgrade – Department store at Bubanj Potok to open this summer

The IKEA department store in Belgrade, which will open in the next few months, will start being supplied with merchandise in four to six weeks and have 9,500 items on offer at prices affordable to many, Vladislav Lalic, Regional Property and Expansion Manager of IKEA South East Europe, said on Sunday, May 7.

He pointed out that IKEA's long-term plans were to open another department store in Belgrade and that it was looking to buy land for that facility on the left bank of the Sava, as well as that they had already bought land in Nis, making the construction of another two department stores in Serbia a possibility.

– We have not given up on the plans we had when we entered the Serbian market in 2008, namely, to open five department stores – Lalic added.

The works on developing the area at the construction site at Bubanj Potok are close to being completed, and interior equipping of the facility has started as well. A large number of solar panels, meant to save energy, have already been installed on the roof. More than 650 workers are engaged in the works every day.

– The department store will be like the ones in Vienna, Paris, London, Tokyo, and will operate in line with all the standards of other IKEA department stores in the world – Lalic said for Tanjug and added that the investment was worth EUR 70 million.

The 45-meter IKEA tower has also been erected, symbolically announcing the completion of the construction of the department store.

The final works on developing the customer area, where various features will be located on more than 33,000 m2, are also in progress. The area will feature a modern restaurant and a special area for animating children, and the facility also contains 1,200 parking spaces and an electric car charger.

Vladislav Lalic announced that the department store would open in summer and that the exact date would be known in around a month. He expects IKEA Belgrade to operate successfully and to have around 2.5 million visitors a year, and he also reminded that all 300 job openings planned for the department store had been filled.

IKEA currently has only one supplier in Serbia, and Lalic says that there are active efforts being made towards increasing that number, which he expects will happen once the Belgrade department store has opened.